Looking Back

I've had a little time to think about the 23 Things project over the past two weeks. Although some weeks it was hard to keep up, I find that I actually miss looking for each week's assignment and having the excuse to experiment. The 'things' that I continue to use: RSS feeds, sharing documents (already did this before 23 Things), bookmarking. I was glad to have a bit of experience or exposure to some of the social sites and photo-sharing, though I won't be using them regularly. I wonder whether there might have been a way for participants to share their views more easily (other than following individual blogs). When I took the time to read posts from other participants I did find them encouraging and helpful. I'm grateful to the colleagues who set up the assignments and kept us going--I think the whole exercise was worthwhile.

Gadgets etc

The greatest challenge throughout the whole 23 Things programme has been remembering where I wrote down all the various user names and passwords. This really brought home to me the problem of identity on the internet. How linked-up should one's activities be? Are there risks in having Flickr, Yahoo, bookmarks etc all linked together? Surely people must be working on better ways to protect identity other than increasingly complicated passwords.
I am pleased that after only a few attempts, I managed to load my Flickr photos onto my blog page, and I enjoyed browsing the gadgets for iGoogle (success there as well). I realized that since I use the University homepage as my PC homepage, I never look at the iGoogle page. On the other hand, I have been using the RSS reader even when not called on to do so by assignments, so I suppose that's progress.

Cloud working

Having worked with Google docs regularly and Buzzword a bit for the past two years, it was interesting to try Thinkfree. The possibilities for formating were useful, but I found the advertising a real disincentive to working on the site. There also seemed to be periodic delays when between typing and the characters appearing on the screen. In situations where you need to share a document or calendar, cloud computer comes into its own, but needing an internet connection to access these documents is a disadvantage in some locations. Are there any recommended readings about possible concerns about storing files in giant servers, many of which are in other countries?